Monday, February 24, 2014

Vienna's Last Jihad by C.Wayne Dawson

Brash and brilliant, twenty year old Mathis Zieglar, Professor of Languages, faces an agonizing choice: should he fight the Turks who take his family hostage and move to destroy Vienna? Or should he betray his army to save his kin? Vienna’s Last Jihad is an historical novel set against the 1683 siege of Vienna.

Europe is balanced on a knife’s edge while Mathis, the man who holds its fate in his hands, struggles against powerful enemies: Father Sistini, a Jesuit who brands him a heretic and drags Mathis’ fiancée off to the Inquisition; a xenophobic city mob, who wants him dead for protecting a Hungarian soldier; but most dangerous of all, Captain Tyrek, a Muslim chieftain who will kill Mathis’ family unless he spies against his own army. One by one, Tyrek’s agents murder Mathis’ closest associates in an attempt to isolate him. As 138,000 Turks grind down Vienna’s 11,000 defenders with no relief in sight, Mathis’ only chance to save family and country is to use his ability to speak Tartar and the knack he learned as a child to leap, whirl like an unwinding mainspring, and strike.

Book Review

C. Wayne Dawson’s Vienna’s Last Jihad is an
absorbing piece of historical fiction that retells one of history’s most
important turning points, the 1683 siege of Vienna, in a way never before
attempted. Readers will cheer on Professor Mathis Zieglar, the saga’s
protagonist, a brash but brilliant academic, as he battles the Inquisition and
an invading horde of Muslim Turks, using his wits and martial talents in a
struggle to save his family and the city of Vienna from impending doom.

Skillfully written and researched by a trained
historian, Dawson’s Vienna’s Last Jihad is a compelling saga that will
transport the reader to a world seldom portrayed in historical fiction and will
plunge him/her into a web of danger, treachery, and white knuckle suspense.
Were this reviewer to summarize the novel as briefly as possible, she would say
“satisfying and never boring.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

C. Wayne Dawson

C. Wayne Dawson writes for The Williamson County Sun, and has written for History Magazine, Focus On Georgetown, The Georgetown Advocate, and SAFVIC Law Enforcement Newsletter. In 2012, he founded Central Texas Authors, an author’s marketing collective.

He was an Adjunct Professor of History for ten years at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California, where he created the Chautauqua program. There, he enlisted scholars, government officials and activists to discuss and debate social policy before the student body and the media.In 2009, the students of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society honored him with the Glaux Mentor Teacher Award for bringing the Chautauqua program to Mt. SAC.He currently lives in Georgetown, TX with his wife and two dogs.For more information please visit C. Wayne Dawson’s website. You can also connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

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